Free Jacques Cousteau by Brad Matsen

extra air into the water in a dense cloud of bubbles, but since the air hose was flexible, and a Fernez diver wore only a mouthpiece and face mask instead of a heavy helmet, the system let him swim free within the range of the hose length. Cousteau liked it because it was simple and had nothing to do with oxygen. Even though the constant cloud of bubbles made filming and hunting impossible, he tried out the system in Toulon harbor.

    Skin diving, 1942. (Standing, left to right) Tailliez, Cousteau, and Dumas
( COURTESY OF WWW.PHILIPPE.TAILLIEZ.NET )
    Cousteau climbed down a ladder from a barge on which a gasoline-powered air pump chugged, while Dumas and Tailliez tended the hose line. He was wearing a new mask with a single oval glass plate sealed to his face with pliant India rubber, a huge improvement over the aviator goggles because it covered his face but still let him squeeze his nose to compensate for the pressure as he descended. He also wore his swimfins, and barely noticed the weight of the leash that tied him to the world above as he glided through the water 40 feet down. Cousteau was enjoying full breaths of air and flying above the worn, muddy bottom of the harbor when the bubbles stopped and he felt as though he had been hit in the chest by a giant hammer. The hose had snared on the gunwale of the barge, the roll of the sea had broken it, and Dumas could do nothing to warn him. The 5-atmosphere pressure of the air from the pump instantly dropped to one atmosphere. If Cousteau inhaled, his lungs could collapse as they struggled to equalize. He realized what had happened, stifled his urge to take even one more breath, and ascended before he drowned.
    A few days later, Dumas was at 70 feet with the Fernez apparatus when the air line ruptured again. He had been hovering over the wreck of a freighter in the outer harbor when the bubbles stopped and he felt the pain of his lungs beginning to contract. Dumas stopped breathing immediately, but 70 feet was at the very edge of a diver’s ability to free ascend with empty lungs. As Dumas clawed for the surface, his oxygen-starved brain started shutting itself down. He lost consciousness just as he broke water. Cousteau dove in, kept him afloat, and shook him back into the world. After that,
Les Mousquemers
gave up on “the pipe” as a way to hunt or shoot film underwater.
    Even with the demands of his wartime navy duties and feeding his family, Cousteau’s mind was never too far from his dream of making movies underwater. He imagined himself first as a filmmaker, then as a diver, knowing that he was in on the ground floor of marvels the world had never before witnessed. With the exception of music, which Cousteau enjoyed without reservation, he devoted all his energies to his ambition to make moving pictures underwater. As a teenager in Paris, he had seen the American remake of
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
, produced in 1916 by Carl Laemmle from film shot by two brothers from Norfolk, Virginia. Now that he was trying everything he could think of to keep his camera dry and shoot movie film underwater, he read everything he could about the American brothers.
    George and John Williamson were the sons of a clipper ship captain who killed time at sea tinkering with practical devices such as a collapsible baby carriage and an electric ship’s signaling lamp. CaptainWilliamson also invented absurdities such as a way to play golf on the ceiling using balloons. He finally left the sea to set up a ship fitting company in Newport News, where, in 1908, he built an underwater chamber for inspecting ships without sending down a diver. A riveted steel observation cylinder itself wasn’t anything new, but Williamson had come up with a system of interlocking metal sleeves with canvas gussets fitted to a hole in the top of the chamber that extended up to the surface. The tube was 3 feet in diameter, big enough for a man to slide through while hanging on to rungs inside, and strong enough